Corporate Flagships
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The current corporate publications that are World Bank Group flagships are: World Development Report (WDR); Global Economic Prospects (GEP), Doing Business (DB), and Poverty and Shared Prosperity (PSP). All go through a formal Bank-wide review and are discussed with the Board prior to their release. In terms of branding, the phrase “A World Bank Group Flagship Report” will be used exclusively on the cover of these publications. This label will signal that the institution assumes a higher level of responsibility for the positions held by these reports. The flagship Global Monitoring Report (GMR) is no longer produced. The flagship Doing Business is no longer produced.
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Publication
Global Economic Prospects, June 2023
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-06)Global growth is projected to slow significantly in the second half of this year, with weakness continuing in 2024. Inflation pressures persist, and tight monetary policy is expected to weigh substantially on activity. The possibility of more widespread bank turmoil and tighter monetary policy could result in even weaker global growth. Rising borrowing costs in advanced economies could lead to financial dislocations in the more vulnerable emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs). In low-income countries, in particular, fiscal positions are increasingly precarious. Comprehensive policy action is needed at the global and national levels to foster macroeconomic and financial stability. Among many EMDEs, and especially in low-income countries, bolstering fiscal sustainability will require generating higher revenues, making spending more efficient, and improving debt management practices. Continued international cooperation is also necessary to tackle climate change, support populations affected by crises and hunger, and provide debt relief where needed. In the longer term, reversing a projected decline in EMDE potential growth will require reforms to bolster physical and human capital and labor-supply growth. -
Publication
Global Economic Prospects, January 2023
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-01-10)Global growth is projected to decelerate sharply, reflecting synchronous policy tightening aimed at containing very high inflation, worsening financial conditions, and continued disruptions from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Investment growth in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs) is expected to remain below its average rate of the past two decades. Further adverse shocks could push the global economy into recession. Small states are especially vulnerable to such shocks because of the reliance on external trade and financing, limited economic diversification, elevated debt, and susceptibility to natural disasters. Against this backdrop, it is critical that EMDE policy makers ensure that any fiscal support is focused on vulnerable groups, that inflation expectations remain well anchored, and that financial systems continue to be resilient. Urgent global and national efforts are also needed to mitigate the risks of global recession and debt distress in EMDEs, and to support a major increase in EMDE investment. -
Publication
Global Economic Prospects, January 2019: Darkening Skies
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-01-08)Global economic prospects have darkened. Financing conditions have tightened, industrial production has moderated, and trade tensions remain elevated. The recovery in emerging market and developing economies has stalled, and some countries have experienced significant financial stress. Downside risks have increased, including the possibility of disorderly financial market movements and escalating trade disputes. It is thus critical to rebuild policy buffers while fostering potential growth by boosting human capital, promoting trade integration, and addressing informality. In addition to discussing global and regional economic developments and prospects, this edition of Global Economic Prospects includes a chapter on the challenges posed by informality and associated policy options. The report also contains pieces on the remarkable decline in inflation in emerging market and developing economies over the past decades, rising debt vulnerabilities in low-income countries, and the implications of large spikes in food prices for poverty. Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing countries, on a semiannual basis (in January and June). The January edition includes in-depth analyses of topical policy challenges faced by these economies, while the June edition contains shorter analytical pieces. -
Publication
Doing Business 2011 : Making a Difference for Entrepreneurs - Comparing Business Regulation in 183 Economies
(World Bank, 2010)Doing Business 2011: making a difference for entrepreneurs is the eighth in a series of annual reports investigating regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 183 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, over time. A set of regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business's are covered: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business. Data in Doing Business 2011 are current as of June 1, 2010. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why. The paper includes the following headings: overview, starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and closing a business. -
Publication
Global Economic Prospects, January 2010: Crisis, Finance, and Growth
(World Bank, 2010)The world economy is emerging from the throes of a historically deep and synchronized recession provoked by the bursting of a global financial bubble. The consequences of the initial bubble and the crisis have been felt in virtually every economy, whether or not it participated directly in the risky behaviors that precipitated the boom-and-bust cycle. And while growth rates have picked up, the depth of the recession means that it will take years before unemployment and spare capacity are reabsorbed. This year's global economic prospects examines the consequences of the crisis for both the short and medium term growth prospects of developing countries. It concludes that the crisis and the regulatory reaction to the financial excesses of the preceding several years may have lasting impacts on financial markets, raising borrowing costs and lowering levels of credit and international capital flows. As a result, the rate of growth of potential output in developing countries may be reduced by between 0.2 and 0.7 percentage points annually over the next five to seven years as economies adjust to tighter financial conditions. Overall, the level of potential output in developing countries could be reduced by between 3.4 and 8 percent over the long run, compared with its pre-crisis path. The report further finds that the very liquid conditions of the first half of the decade contributed to the expansion in credit available in developing countries and that this expansion was responsible for about 40 percent of the approximately 1.5 percentage point acceleration of the pace at which many developing-country economies could grow without generating significant inflation. While developing countries probably cannot reverse the expected tightening in international financial conditions, there is considerable scope for reducing domestic borrowing costs, or increasing productivity and thereby regaining the higher growth path that the crisis has derailed. -
Publication
Development Economics through the Decades: A Critical Look at 30 Years of the World Development Report
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2009)The World Development Report (WDR) has become such a fixture that it is easy to forget the circumstances under which it was born and the Bank's motivation for producing such a report at that time. In the first chapter of this essay, the authors provide a brief background on the circumstances of newly independent developing countries and summarize some of the main strands of the emerging field of development economics. This backdrop to the genesis of the WDR accounts for the orientation of the earlier reports. The thinking on development in the 1960s and 1970s also provides a baseline from which to view the evolution that has occurred since. From the coverage in the second chapter, the authors isolate a number of key issues common to several or all of the WDRs, and the author examine these issues individually at greater length in third chapter. The discussion in third chapter, which builds on the material in the WDRs, presents some views about how far development thinking and, relatedly, policy making have advanced relative to 30 years ago. It asks whether promoting growth, building institutions, tackling inequality and poverty, making aid effective, and defining the role of the state have been rendered more tractable policy wise by the knowledge encapsulated in the WDRs. Chapter four looks ahead and points to some of the big challenges that the Bank might explore through future WDRs and the value it can add through the knowledge acquired from its cross-country operations and research. -
Publication
Global Economic Prospects 2009 : Commodities at the Crossroads
(World Bank, 2009)The release of this year's global economic prospects finds the world economy at a crossroads. Markets all over the world are engulfed in a global economic crisis, with stock markets sharply down and volatile, almost all currencies having depreciated substantially against the dollar, and risk premiums on a wide range of debt having increased by 600 or more basis points. Commodity markets too have turned a corner. Following several years of increase, prices have plummeted, and although well above their 1990s levels, they have given up most of the increases of the past 24 months. Chapter one of this report examines the medium-term implications of this crisis for developing-country growth, inflation, and world trade. Chapter two looks at longer-term supply and demand prospects in commodity markets. It takes into account the long-term growth prospects of developing countries and their rising share in world GDP (gross domestic product), the declining quality of new pools of resources, and the influence of technology on both demand and supply. Finally, chapter three reports on the poverty impacts of high commodity prices and examines the effectiveness of policies in both producing and consuming countries in dealing with the challenges posed by periodic bouts of high commodity prices. -
Publication
Global Economic Prospects 2008 : Technology Diffusion in the Developing World
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2008)This Global Economic Prospects (GEP) is being released during a period of increased uncertainty following four years of record growth in developing countries, and a 15-year period of steady declines in poverty. Global growth slowed modestly in 2007, coming at 3.5 percent after 3.9 percent in 2006. Most of the slowdown was due to weaker growth in high-income countries. This GEP seeks to develop a better understanding of technology and its diffusion within the developing world. It adopts a broad definition of technology and technological progress, that encompasses the techniques (including the way the production process is organized) by which goods and services are produced, marketed, and made available to the public. This report takes a quantitative approach to understanding technology and technological progress. In chapter 2, it explores the level of, and recent trends in, technological achievement, as well as the process by which technology diffuses between and within countries. Chapter 3 concentrates on the process by which countries absorb foreign technology, both mechanisms through which they are exposed to foreign technologies, and the domestic factors that dictate how successfully those technologies are absorbed. -
Publication
Doing Business 2009 : Comparing Regulation in 181 Economies
(Washington, DC : World Bank and Palgave Macmillon, 2008)Doing Business 2009 is the sixth in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 181 economies from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and over time. Regulations affecting 10 stages of the life of a business are measured: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and closing a business. Data in Doing Business 2009 are current as of June 1, 2008. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why. The methodology for the legal rights of lenders and borrowers, part of the getting credit indicators, changed for Doing Business 2009. The paper includes the following headings: overview, starting a business, dealing with construction permits, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and closing a business. -
Publication
Doing Business 2008 : Comparing Regulation in 178 Economies
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)Doing business 2008 is the fifth in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 178 economies, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, and over time. Regulations affecting 10 stages of a business's life are measured: starting a business, dealing with licenses, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and closing a business. Data in doing business 2008 are current as of June 1, 2007. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why. The Doing business methodology has limitations. Other areas important to business-such as a country's proximity to large markets, the quality of its infrastructure services, the security of property from theft and looting, the transparency of government procurement, macroeconomic conditions or the underlying strength of institutions-are not studied directly by doing business. To make the data comparable across countries, the indicators refer to a specific type of business-generally a limited liability company operating in the largest business city.